Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, Peter Mulryan stood in the High Court trying to establish what happened to his sister - was she trafficked or was she buried? As the same time, the Taoiseach's Minister, Deputy Noonan, stood outside the old Barringtons Hospital in Limerick welcoming the new addition to the Bon Secours empire, the biggest private hospital empire in this country. I argue that this empire was built on the bones of the dead Tuam babies. I am sick of listening to Ministers - including the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, on radio at the weekend - saying that we are all responsible for what happened in Tuam and that we are all responsible for the legacy. That is not the case. What happened in Tuam was paid for by this State in the form of a headage payment for each child, as if they were cattle or sheep. The mothers who were forced to go in there, or their mothers who put them in there, did not ask for them to be starved to death, to be neglected to death, to be buried unbeknownst to them or to be trafficked to America. The headage payment involved for the trafficking of each child to America was between $2,000 and $3,000 at the time. A lot of money was made out of the babies of the mothers who went into mother and baby homes. It was systemic abuse. It was abuse that involved the State and the church working together.

What are we going to do about it, Taoiseach? The first thing we should not do is to stand outside the latest addition to the Bon Secours empire and celebrate its completion two days after this report was published. How obscene.

The first thing we should do - I call on the Taoiseach to do this with me - is ask the Bon Secours order to reconsider its position and disband. It has no moral authority to remain an order in this country. To that end, I call on all communities in which there are Bon Secours utilities - in Limerick, Cork, Cavan, Dublin and Tralee - to stand outside those hospitals at 6 p.m. this Friday in a dignified protest, bearing white ribbons in memory of these children and calling on the order to disband. This was a system of abuse and a network of buildings, institutions, organisations, orphanages, Magdalen laundries, mother and child homes and industrial schools and the State knew exactly what was going on inside them. Then, to add insult to injury, the State, through a deal done in 2002 by the former Fianna Fáil Minister, Michael Woods, indemnified the church to the tune of €128 million, while the State has paid €1.5 billion in restitution for the abuse that has happened because of the church. In order to really do something about the future, we must drop the Woods deal, get rid of it immediately and make the church pay not just for a memorial to the children but for every penny in offence it has caused the families and survivors. We must send a clear signal that the days of abuse of women and the obsession with their pregnancies and bodies are over. To do so, I call on the House to support my Bill, to be considered tonight, to end the 14-year sentence for abortion in this country. It is obscene that we have that provision and it must go.

I am therefore asking the Taoiseach to do three things: to join me in a call for the Bon Secours order to disband today, to support the Bill tonight and to call on people to gather in a dignified, quiet manner at the Bon Secours institutes on Friday night to remember these children and ask the order to go.

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